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HomeThreatsMcAfee Identifies Major Cyber Attack by Lazarus hacker group

February 20, 2018

McAfee Identifies Major Cyber Attack by Lazarus hacker group

CyberWisdom Safe Harbor Commentary on Lazarus hacker group

I couldn’t believe this story from btcmanager.com that asks an interesting on the Lazarus hacker group, headquartered in North Korea, is now targeting cryptocurrency theft and phishing attacks against individuals and banking institutions. Analysts at McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) uncovered new cyber attacks. As an article published by McAfee on its Web site reveals, phishing attacks target Bitcoin users and use sophisticated malicious files to access data.

Hoaboa, but maybe Lazarus hacker group

Lazarus, a cybercriminal group, was suspected of supporting the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017 and the company has reinstated its phishing email once again to counterfeit employees for vacancies in links to word documents infected in the e-mail. When an unsuspecting victim opens the link, it redirects to the Dropbox web page hosting the Word file, tricking users from downloading the malware.

This ambitious cybercrime campaign is known as “Haobao,” in which malware files are scanned for any bitcoin or cryptocurrency-related activity after being downloaded. Once this malware infects the target, it begins to collect various data and send it back to the remote server.

On January 15, 2018, a recent Lazarus cyberattack attempt was exposed after McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) analysts discovered the malicious link that contained the document.

After further analysis, it shows that the file was edited and uploaded by the author under the name “Windows User” with no apparent name. McAfee has shown that in January, the same author created multiple infected files and uploaded them to the link on the 16th and January 24, 2018. The attack aims to identify victims running bitcoin-related software through specific system scans.

As McAfee said on its official blog, after downloading the infected file:

“The victim was persuaded to declare that the document was made in an earlier version of Microsoft Word by notifying him that the malicious document was then launched on the victim’s system through a Visual Basic macro.”

In addition, it has been found that the infected link also establishes contact with the same IP address previously used by Lazarus to host different malicious documents in 2017. The corrupted document was written by the same user name and has become the norm for some hacker organizations since the last cyber attacks.

Although the campaign is now known as Haobao, it is in line with Lazarus hacker group’s interest in cryptocurrency theft. Lazarus adopted the same technique that used similar file structures and job advertisements in previous phishing attacks.

In early January 2018, Marko Kobal, co-founder of NiceHash, a startup that markets cryptocurrencies, resigned as a chief executive officer. The announcement took place after a high-profile cyber attack on NiceHash, resulting in the loss of thousands of bitcoin.

On December 12, 2017, Bitfinex, a major cryptocurrency exchange, crashed into reports of hacking. The week before, Bitfinex had reported that they were the victims of a distributed denial of service attack, causing it to temporarily halt its trading platform.

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BITCOIN PRICE: 11,592.00 HIGH: 11,645.67 LOW: 10,900.00 Advertise with Us Jobs at BTCManager Don’t miss out on the latest news Get BTCMANAGER delivered right to your inbox The blockchain technology is much more than Bitcoin and mining and trading cryptocurrencies. It can be leveraged in a wide February 20, 2018 12:45 by Rahul Nambiampurath The North Korea-based Lazarus hacking group is now targeting individuals and banking institutions with bitcoin stealing and phishing campaigns. The new cyber attack was discovered by analysts at McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR). As revealed by the company in a post on its website, the phishing attack is targeted towards bitcoin users and uses a sophisticated malicious document for accessing data. Lazarus, the cybercrime group, suspected to be behind the WannaCry ransomware attacks in 2017, has resumed its phishing emails again, targeting individuals with fake employee recruitment openings in an infected word document link in the email. When unsuspecting victims open this link, it redirects to a Dropbox webpage hosting the word file, thereby tricking the user into downloading the malware. This ambitious cybercrime campaign has been dubbed as “Haobao” wherein the malware file, after being downloaded, starts scanning for any bitcoin or cryptocurrency related activity. Once this… Engaging post, Read More…

thumbnail courtesy of btcmanager.com

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Pseudo author name by David S. Eng offers valuable information and cyber threat incident alerts to protect, prevent, mitigate, respond, recover, and learn about Cybersecurity threats to your business and family. CyberWisdom author curated Cyber Security Information and News Feeds and Articles. He has six years of hands on experiences as the principal researcher for DHS Cybersecurity Pilot Program on cyber threat intelligence, risk management, cyber technologies, web collaboration tools.